Literary Seductions: Compulsive Writers and Diverted Readers

by Frances Wilson

A fascinating and revealing look at complex relationships that mix love, ambition, talent, and need explores the dynamics between such artistic couples as Robert Graves and Laura Riding, Anans Nin and Henry Miller, and W. B. and George Yeats.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Frances Wilson was educated at Oxford University and lectured on nineteenth- and twentieth-century English literature for fifteen years before becoming a full-time writer. Her books include Literary Seductions: Compulsive Writers and Diverted Readers and The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life, which won the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize. She reviews widely in the British press and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She divides her time between London and Normandy.

Reviews

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really unusual and interesting, stayed will me for a long time. Gave me a lot to think about!

[Leslie Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I enjoyed the argument of the book and found the writing compelling, I felt there was a lack of attention or maybe a problematic attention paid to gender. While there was never a point that specifically caught my eye, I came away from this feeling like these women were generally on the "crazy side" while the men involved were treated much more sympathetically. Perhaps this betrays some of my own discomfort with gender as treated by psychoanalytic theory as it honestly is more of an impression than a complaint about a passage or aspect of the argument.

That said, this is an enjoyable book and reads much more like a popular study than an academic tome, which is a good thing. The research is certainly there, it just doesn't dominate the reading to make it inaccessible. I would say that if you enjoy any of the authors covered, you should pick this up regardless of how many courses you've had in critical theory. I've heard that good criticism should make you want to read the author under study and I have to say that this work introduced me to Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam and their Russian contemporaries, authors new to me. Likewise, it made me want to go back and read more Anais Nin, so all in all, despite my misgivings, this was a strong book and a good foray into academic writing for someone who has left a lot of it behind.

[Laura]

I enjoyed the introduction and the first two chapters, but I couldn't get into Robert Graves & Laura Riding or Osip & Nadezhda Mandelstam. The analysis seemed disorganized and circular which didn't do justice to what I am sure were fascinating relationships. It might have helped had I known something of the writers' work (as I did of Anais Nin & Henry Miller, albeit not much). I should've known my reading would be doomed, however, from the moment in the introduction where Wilson declares that she will not be writing about the type of seduction as that between Elizabeth Barrett & Robert Browning, when that in particular was the type for which I had picked up the book, since it is one familiar to me (my husband and I first met through our web journals, pre-blogging). Unfortunately Wilson went off in another direction which I had little interest in following.

[sisterimapoet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clearly defined sections that explored different angles of the extreme relationships that can arise between writers and readers.

Interesting because I knew very little about the main literary figures mentioned, although for a subject so passionate to those invovled I found this book itself drifted into dull repetition at times.

There was also that length sort of introduction which annoys me, where it gives a brief overview of everything that the book will cover, and leaves me wondering why I should bother reading on.

[Kitty with Curls · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would give this one star, except for the fact that it's hilariously bad.